One of the most common problems companies and organizations have is project management. It is impossible to advance your mission or balance sheet without taking some people to do something. Even if you are an individual sole proprietor, you rely on vendors to do work for you and must manage their commitments.
There are many options for software to help make this easier. Much of it makes it more difficult. Drag racing with a minivan is certainly feasible. However, if winning the race is the goal it is not recommended and in fact should be discouraged.
Excel, Microsoft Project, and so many others are often misapplied in a similar fashion due to the misperception that possibility equals probability.
Just because it is possible to manage your project in an ad hoc spreadsheet you created does not mean it is probable that you will be able to do so. In fact, it is likely improbable.
With the myriad options available, why do I recommend Basecamp? I explain 5 reasons why I recommend Basecamp and then talk a bit about how I compliment this below.
- The Project Determines The Management Tool
Certain projects require unique management due to their duration, scale, compliance and reporting requirements and for these I do not recommend Basecamp. However, these pale in number and are often coupled with many other simple projects as well.Companies that have complex projects need to manage those projects appropriately. However, managing the numerous simple projects also in progress should be done in a system better suited for simple projects. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s beneficial. Let the project decide the level of complexity it requires to manage.Many great projects are killed due to time and budget overruns caused by overmanagement – making the easy hard.
Basecamp lets easy remain that way and makes sure it actually gets done – making the easy done. - The Project Team Needs to be “All In”
The most common way of “managing” projects is using email. This should really be called “monitoring” projects as it is impossible to manage a project without additional information such as what other projects are in progress, what else has been completed recently, and what milestones have changed.This is very flexible as it makes few demands on the project participants save the common denominator of an email account. However, it makes big demands on the project manager who must now mine needed information out of every member on the project, including staff, vendors, managers, and contractors.All members of the project need to be using the same system so they are equally and mutually accountable to the goal of the team and the project. This system needs to be visible to each member in the increasingly decentralized team.Basecamp offers an unlimited number of users so the entire project cast can easily be added to the same project with not extra cost – including vendors and contractors!
- The Tool Needs To Be First Usable, Second Powerful
The diversity of a project team will bring various levels of technical knowledge together. The less technically inclined will be averse to a significant learning curve or any system that may put them at a signficant disadvantage to their “geek” comrades. What good is a great system that nobody uses?Basecamp is a very accessible system with little required beyond the video tour to get a basic working knowledge of its features and some fundamental benefits. Certainly there is much to learn beyond this (from a coach!) but the basics are accessible to all. Additionally, since it is web based, it can be accessed by your team anywhere in the world like google.com.The features of Basecamp (Messages, Milestones, etc.) are very simple yet flexible so you can use them in unique ways to benefit your business. For example, you can use Messages to leverage email communications but eliminate searching for past emails. - The
ShowProject Must Go On
So you’ve invested all of this time, effort, planning, and capital to identify the problem, craft a solution, define a budget, get buy-in, gather a strong team, and get them all rowing in the same direction toward completion.However, in the process you have overlooked the likely event that your project manager and others on the team may not last the entire project. Let’s say you’re sending emails for all of your tasks, deadlines, and updates and your project manager goes out for maternity leave 5 weeks into the 8 week project. What do you do? Well, if you didn’t have your own job to do it might be fun just to jump in there and take it over. This is unlikely but might be the best scenario since you will now have to manually gather the history, status, obstacles, and risks related to the project. This will take a very large effort given the tight time frame and the rapport (hopefully!) you have with your team will be of great value as you ask them to spend extra time getting you ramped up about the project as they try and meet their own deadlines within the project.This is just one aspect, I haven’t even spoken of the significant risks of derailing this project such as:- Enlisting managers from members
- Attracting a new manager when necessary
- Attracting new members for the project
- Onramping all new members and managers
- Missing a critical deadline due to lack of visibility
- Miscommunicating due to stakeholder ignorance
Basecamp helps overcome these and many other challenges which help the project survive in the event of both common and unlikely events. A common platform for understanding, an archive of previous communication and activity, a web based platform that requires no training all minimize the risk of project failure due to information being lost, buried, hidden, or otherwise inaccessible.
- Meetings Should Advance, Not Describe the Project
Most of the time spent on project management is gathering status from the participants and stakeholders so it can then be aggregated and acted on. This is a very time consuming process as it requires follow up questions and must occur on a phone call or IM chat. This means it must be scheduled and can take time to get an available slot with all of your 3, 5, or 10 team members.Even after gaining all of this status information, the project manager then must speak to specific members in order to make decisions on various aspects of the project. The process starts again and this is the life of a project manager who uses email as the tool.Basecamp provides a simple Overview tab on every project and even for all projects at a glance that conveys common status questions such as what has been completed, added, moved, deleted in a fraction of the time. A team member doesn’t need to tell anyone they completed a task, they just complete it and everyone knows.
This visibility greatly enhances accountability and proactivity which increases the quality and timeliness of the project. Now, phone calls and other communications can be used to make decisions on information already gathered or better yet, to innovate and explore avenues not yet conceived.
For project managers with lots of projects, you can subscribe via RSS to Basecamp feeds which bring all of the vital communications into your agregator to be managed the way you want to.
This is just five of the reasons I have chosen Basecamp for the majority of projects. I haven’t spoken of versioning, Team Consulting, private communications, or mobile applications.
The bottom line relates to your bottom line:
The Cost/Benefit Analysis is Simple
Basecamp has a fixed cost structure related to concurrent projects, any of which can be archived and re-opened at will, enabling hundreds of projects to be managed with even the 25 project subscription. The valuable project data you store in Basecamp becomes accessible history in the archive forever. The simplicity of the system encourages you to properly manage many smaller projects that are important but often mismanaged due to resource constraints or complexity.
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How can your Success Rabbi help?
I compliment Basecamp by helping you accelerate your accumen and adoption. I generally work with managers who want to lead strong and make Basecamp part of their company business process. With monthly calls, personal webinars, problem solving, and strategy, you can feel empowered to motivate positive change and be supported in the process. Contact me for more information.
